Cathay Pacific agrees to buy 32 Airbus planes at list price of $4.06 billion

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Cathay Pacific Airways (HKSE:0293.HK - News) said on Monday it has agreed to buy 32 new planes from Airbus Group (Paris:AIR.PA - News) at a list price of $4.06 billion, just a week after it posted its worst first-half loss in at least two decades as it continued to lose customers.

The aircraft would be operated mainly by Cathay Dragon, the sister airline of Cathay Pacific, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The aggregate consideration for the Airbus aircraft, as a result of negotiations between the two parties, will be lower than the list price, it added.

The news comes a week after Cathay Pacific said it did not see operating conditions improving over the rest of 2017, although analysts said they believed losses had bottomed for Hong Kong's flagship carrier which has been hit by fierce competition from lower-cost rivals.

The struggling airline is in the middle of a three-year reorganization plan, the benefits of which Chairman John Slosar has said would begin to surface in the second half of 2017.

(Reporting By Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)